BEAUTY AS EXPERIENCE

Anton Zoetmulder

Preface

Beauty as Experience

Beauty as Experience
Author: Anton Zoetmulder
Student number: 1353640
Tutor: Stefan Kller
Course: Thesis Project Explore Lab
Course code: AR3EX301
Written for the graduation lab of Explore Lab on the faculty
of Architecture, Urbanism & Building Sciences on the TU
Delft

Preface

Preface
This research Beauty as Experience was written under
supervision of Stefan Kller to comply with the research part
of my graduation at Explore Lab on the faculty of
Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences at the TU
Delft. However, most importantly it was written in order to
explore my fascination for the topic of beauty in
architecture.
This research is organized around a multitude of chapters
that read as a crescendo but are in fact a decomposition in
order to search for the ingredients that make up an
experience of beauty. In this thesis I will commence by
analyzing the legacy of one of the founding fathers of
present day theory of beauty; Immanuel Kant. Firstly I will
dive deeper into the understanding of Kants free play of
mind, since, I think, it is crucial in the establishment of an
experience of beauty. Secondly I will examine the peculiar
relation architecture has in relation to the Kantian concept
of free beauty and I will argue that architecture is not
excluded from Kants conception of beauty. Kants Kritik der

Urteilskraft will act as a foundation to work from in the rest

of my research. After this I will elaborate, expand and alter
Kants notions in order to include the integral experience of
beauty and in this sense adding a more phenomenological
4

Beauty as Experience
side to the discussion. I will do this by taking from, among
others, writers like; Gottfried Bhme, John Dewey and
Alexander Nehamas. Through Gernot Bhmes writing on
new aesthetics and atmosphere I will try to connect human
states to environmental qualities in experience. Through
John Deweys Art as Experience I will try to find more
elements of which an experience of beauty is constructed.
From there I will continue by taking from Alexander
Nehamas Only a Promise of Happiness and some
examples of architecture to identify and concretize several
of the elements of which an experience of beauty is
composed.

Anton Zoetmulder
Delft, 21-062015

Contents

Beauty as Experience

Contents
0 Prologue ................................................................... 8
1 Kant ....................................................................... 11
2 The free play ........................................................... 14
3 Architecture and free beauty ..................................... 18
4 A new perspective.................................................... 26
5 Atmosphere............................................................. 31
6 An experience of beauty ........................................... 41
7 Promise of more....................................................... 51
8 Elements ................................................................. 57
9 Examples ................................................................ 63
Bibliography .............................................................. 72

Prologue

0 Prologue
The topic of beauty in architecture fascinated me because it
is often neglected in architectural education; because of its
presupposed subjective character beauty is never seen as a
valid design choice and more rational or pragmatic design
considerations are taken as superior. Still it is obvious that
architects have to inevitably make decisions regarding
beauty in every design process, it is never something you
can bypass. However, because most of the education is
concerned with concept development in order to make
pragmatic design choices we are only marginally able to
think about our aesthetic design implications. While, in fact,
the main conception of an actual building, through realtime experience, is the way it is aesthetically judged.
One of the main complications I found in architectures
dealing with beauty is that, although everyone seems to
know beauty is a subjective and very personal experience,
architectural theories tend to focus on the formal, objective,
characteristics of buildings. This approach seems to suggest
that beauty is something that can be forced upon a
perceiver by an authority, the architect or designer, which
has a more developed taste. And especially this, the topdown forcing of a superior taste, is something completely
8

Beauty as Experience
outdated in a world that has never been so focused on the
development of the individual personal self.
So, instead of trying to find formal guidelines to create
beautiful architecture (like was used in the classical
conception of aesthetics in architecture), my research
focused on the experience of beauty and how such an
experience can be understood in such a way that a
designer can use it to make aesthetic design choices.
Universality, and thus objectivity, in beauty is not to be
found in the object that is judged as beauty, however, it can
be found in the fact that the experience of beauty is
universally recognized as an existing experience. Moreover
this experience of beauty, in all its various ways it comes to
us, still has certain sameness in how this experience is
composed and how this experience is lifted up from the
general flow of experience.
This shift of focus triggered a research on the decomposition
of the experience of beauty in order to distill elements in it.
These elements are the core ingredients of each separate
experience of beauty. The way beauty is experienced, with
all its various parts and elements, is the pre-eminent thing
that binds various experiences of beauty together. The
experience is the coherent factor that joins together the
9

Prologue
beauty found in Terragnis fascist masterpiece Casa del
Fascio to the beauty discovered in the Parthenon on the
Acropolis in Athens.
My research was mostly done as a philosophical research
on beauty; I mostly laid aside the architectural focused
aesthetic theories and focused on the work of among
others; Immanuel Kant, John Dewey, Gottfried Bhme and
Alexander Nehamas. Most other points of departure came
from phenomenological research on my own and other
persons experiences of beauty and intensive talking about
their varieties and consistencies.

10

Beauty as Experience

1 Kant
Writing about beauty one cannot sidestep Immanuel Kant,
his Kritik der Urteilkraft first appeared in 1790 and has
since been seen as one of the blueprints of any writing and
thinking about beauty. This is not without reason, because
in his writing Kant heroically and quite successfully tried to
connect

the

two

main

existing

aesthetic

traditions,

empiricism and rationalism. The empiricist tradition,

represented by Hume, Hutcheson and Burke, claimed that
beauty was an expression of feeling and a matter of
subjective preferences. The rationalist tradition, represented
by Baumgarten and Meier, saw beauty as the cognition of
an object as having an objective property of beauty
(Ginsborg, 2013, p. 6; Wood, 2005, p. 154).
The way of looking Kant introduced, in which beauty can
be approached both from a subjective side and an
objective side, is now quite familiar and it is very apparent
in our way of writing and talking about beauty. On the one
hand we make a judgment of beauty by stating that: x is
beautiful, seeming to suggest that the beauty is in the
property of the judging object. On the other hand we are
very familiar with such aphorism as: beauty is in the eye
of the beholder, stating that beauty is a personal, and thus
a subjective, matter. The reunion of these two worlds is the
11

Kant
toughest challenge Kant, and still any writer on beauty, has
to face.
The connection Kant tries to make between the subject
oriented theories and the object oriented theories is most
apparent in the four heads or moments Kant introduces in
the first section of his Kritik der Urteilskraft. With these four
moments he tries to distinguish a pure judgment of beauty
as opposed to one that is not pure. This distinction is
necessary because it is quite unclear what is actually meant
when one says something is beautiful, sometimes the
judgment x is beautiful is used to communicate that you
like something, while some other time you use the word
beauty to find words for something that was so beautiful
that you felt it was almost indescribable. It must be clear
that when I say to a friend I think he has beautiful new
shoes the use of the word beauty is very different than when
I try to explain him the indescribable beautiful experience I
had when I was hiking in the mountains during sunrise.
Kant will mostly discuss the later, the judgment of pure
beauty, in his Kritik der Urteilskraft.
In order for a judgment to be in fact a pure judgment of
beauty it must confirm to all four moments Kant introduces.
In these moments he describes two seemingly opposed sets
12

Beauty as Experience
of features; on the one hand features relating to subjective
values on the other hand features relating to objective
grounds. In short these moments are: Firstly, a judgment of
beauty is based on a feeling of disinterested pleasure (5).
Secondly, a judgment of beauty makes a claim to universal
validity, this universality is however not based on concepts
(9). Thirdly, a judgment of beauty presupposes that the
object about which the judgment is made does not have an
end or purpose which it is taken to satisfy (17). Fourthly, a
judgment of beauty is exemplary of how everyone else is
ought to judge (22). As stated before, with these moments
he insists on describing two seemingly opposed sets of
features. On the one hand judgments of beauty are based
on a feeling of pleasure and thus the subject side of the
debate. On the other hand they make a claim to universal
validity and thus the object side of the debate. This
insistence confronts him with the problem of how the two
features are to be brought together. As Kant puts it:

how is a judgment possible which, merely from one's own

feeling of pleasure in an object, independent of its concept,
judges this pleasure as attached to the representation of the
same object in every other subject, and does so a priori,
i.e., without having to wait for the assent of others? (Kant,
2008,

p.
13

36)

The free play

2 The free play

Kants official answer, which is I think the most crucial part
of Kants theory, hinges on that pleasure in the beautiful is
depended on the free play of the faculties of imagination
and understanding (9). In Kants earlier work Kritik der

reinen

Vernunft

(1781)

he

describes

the

ordinary

distinctions and relations between these two faculties.

According to Kant the faculty of understanding is prescribed
by rules that correspond to particular concepts, which are
then applied to objects (Ginsborg, 2013, p. 6). You
understand the world by things that you already know or
recognize. When using the faculty of understanding you
ascribe a determinative concept to your perception and
make a, so called, determining judgment. On the other
hand Kant describes the faculty of imagination as the
synthesizing of the manifold of intuition in order to bring
them under rules of the understanding (Ginsborg, 2013, p.
6). When using the faculty of imagination you reflect upon
the object in order to arrive at a concept belonging to it
without presupposing one, you make a, so called, reflecting
judgment (Wood, 2005, p. 154). In determining judgment
a concept is applied while in reflecting judgment a concept
is sought out. In this sense imagination is always
constrained by understanding, namely through the placing
under a concept, however, in Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft
14

Beauty as Experience
he introduces a new relationship in which imagination and
understanding can stand, namely the free play.
When the state of mind of the perceiving subject is in free
play this means that the faculties of imagination and
understanding stand in a different relation than they would
normally do. Now the faculty of imagination harmonizes
with

the

understanding

without

imagination

being

constrained or governed by understanding. The perceiving

subject becomes free from guidance by any concepts
(Ginsborg, 2013, p. 6; Wood, 2005, p. 155). And thus the
subject doesnt perceive and respond to an object as related
to this and this concept, instead the subject whose faculties
are in free play responds to it with a state of mind which
does not relate to any concept in particular (Robert, 2014).
You perceive whatever might be without relating it to a
particular concept. It is precisely this non-conceptual state of
mind that can give you the feeling of disinterested pleasure
and it is this kind of pleasure which is the basis for a
judgment of pure beauty.
What is interesting about Kants dualist approach to the
human mind is that more recent neurological research
showed a same sort of distinction between the two
hemispheres of the brain. The left hemisphere, which is
15

The free play

more

related

to

what

Kant

calls

the

faculty

of

understanding, is mostly concerned with narrowly and/or

focused attention to things you already know are of
importance(McGilchrist, 2009, p. 177). While the right
hemisphere, which is more related to what Kant calls the
faculty of imagination, is mostly used to have vigilant
and/or broad attention for whatever might be without any
commitment to what that might be, so without relating it to
any concept in particular (McGilchrist, 2009, p. 178). So
when the state-of-mind is in free play the right hemisphere,
imagination, is in harmony with the left hemisphere,
understanding, without being constrained by the left
hemisphere. This means we perceive in a broad, vigilant
and open way without pinning things down or making them
exact by relating them to particular prescribed concepts.
Normally the understanding constrains imagination so that
we can make sense of the world around us; we move
through the city and understand the traffic lights and
pedestrian crossings because we relate the appropriate
concepts to them, the left hemisphere or the faculty of
understanding is dominantly active. However, when we are
in a new environment, for example on vacation in a country
with a different culture, it becomes more difficult for the
understanding to make sense of the world around us.
16

Beauty as Experience
Neurological studies have shown that especially in these
kinds of new situations the right hemisphere, the faculty of
imagination, starts becoming more active (McGilchrist,
2009). And one must admit; there is a lot of beauty to be
seen in an unknown environment, while in your familiar
environment most judgments of beauty are merely of an
agreeable kind.

17

Architecture and free beauty

3 Architecture and free beauty

Kant is for aesthetic theory what Newton is for the natural
sciences, we owe him a lot but we also struggle with the
flaws in his legacy. One of these is his strict object-subject
dichotomy, of course this dichotomy was a reaction to his
contemporaries but it was also a rudiment of his other
judgment theories introduced in his Kritik der reinen

Vernunft (I will come back to this later). Besides this, another

difficulty lies in the fact that I will write about beauty with in
my mind beauty experienced through the perception of
architecture. And precisely architecture and Kants aesthetic
theory have a peculiar relation, since, according to Kant, a
building can never be appreciated as purely beautiful. A
buildings usefulness pollutes its capacity to be judged as
beautiful, since, according to Kant, it can never be judged
without taking into account its purpose (Holland, 2013). The
architects fright for Kant is mostly caused by the following
sentence in 16:

But the beauty of () a building (such as a church,

palace, arsenal, or summer-house), presupposes a concept
of the end that defines what the thing has to be, and
consequently a concept of its perfection; and is therefore
merely dependent beauty (Kant, 2008, pp. 38, 16).
18

Beauty as Experience
This sentence is part of moment three, namely; a judgment
of beauty presupposes that the object about which the
judgment is made does not have an end or purpose which it
is taken to satisfy. In making this argument Kant introduces
the difference between free beauties and dependent
beauties, in which free beauties presuppose no concept of
what the object should be and dependent beauties do
presuppose such a concept and consequently a model of its
perfection. Kant states that a building always has a function
and therefore it possess an a priori concept of its perfection
which it is taken to satisfy and therefore it can be merely a
dependent beauty and consequently it can never be the
object of a pure judgment of beauty.
In the treatment of free and dependent beauties Kant talks
about them as if they are features of the object that is being
judged, and therefore it sometimes seems as if an object
can be either an adherent beauty or a free beauty (and not
both). However, when you think of an object, any object,
none of them can ever be a purely free beauty; that being
that it presupposes no concept at all. Every object can and
will be classified by man and can therefore be judged
according to belonging to this or that concept and thus to a
certain perfection of this concept. To see an object as a free
beauty seems more dependent on a way of looking than
19

Architecture and free beauty

that it is on whether or not the object presupposes a concept
of its definitive end. Kant has the following thing to say
about this:

In respect of an object with a definite internal end, a

judgement of taste would only be pure where the person
judging either has no concept of this end, or else makes
abstraction from it in his judgement. But in cases like this,
although such a person should lay down a correct
judgement of taste, since he would be estimating the object
as a free beauty, he would still be found fault with by
another who saw nothing in its beauty but a dependent
quality (i.e., who looked to the end of the object) and would
be accused by him of false taste, though both would, in
their own way, be judging correctly: the one according to
what he had present to his senses, the other according to
what was present in his thoughts. This distinction enables us
to settle many disputes about beauty on the part of critics;
for we may show them how one side is dealing with free
beauty, and the other with that which is dependent: the
former passing a pure judgement of taste, the latter one that
is applied intentionally(Kant, 2008, pp. 39, 16).
For an object to be a free beauty it is more important
whether the perceiving and judging subject is able to see
20

Beauty as Experience
the concepts the object belongs to or not, if I dont see,
recognize or understand the concept the object belongs to
1

only then can I experience it as a pure beauty . Because in

fact every object is simultaneously a dependent and a free
beauty, whether you experience them as the former or the
latter depends on what is present in your memory and in
what state of mind you are. This makes Crawford suggest
that the predicate dependent or free is not supposed to be
designated to the object of beauty at all, but that it is
instead designated to the judgment of beauty itself. This
way we can have a free judgment of beauty as opposed to
2

a dependent judgment of beauty (Crawford, 1974, p. 56),

the dependent judgment of beauty can never be a pure
judgment of beauty because the judgment is made
according to a concept of an end the judged object is taken
to satisfy.

This stance is supported by Karan August: This unbalance (in

dependent beauties) hinders the power of reflecting judging,
unless the individual is either ignorant to the normative
hierarchies of the idealized forms, or if the individual is able to
intentionally bracket off the social-historical-political concepts of
ends(August, 2013).

Kants way of talking was, according to Crawford, simply a

concession to common ways of talking. Just like Kant simplifies the
judgment of pure beauty to judgment of beauty, so without the
pure, in almost the entirety of the Kritik der Urteilskraft.

21

Architecture and free beauty

The judgment This tulip is beautiful is not a judgment of
pure beauty if the judgment relates to the beautifulness this
tulip has in comparison to other tulips, because then it
would relate to a concept of its end, also it is not a
judgment of pure beauty if the judgment is intended to
mean that all tulips are beautiful, because then beauty
would be a predicate assigned to all tulips. It is only a
judgment of pure beauty in the sense that this tulip there is
beautiful and it is precisely, and only, this tulip there that
gives me the feeling of disinterested pleasure. And it is only
in the latter example in which the judgment is dealing with
a free beauty and thus (possibly) with a pure judgment of
3
beauty .

In order to be able to make this latter judgment, thus to see

this tulip there without relating it to tulips in general, I have
to be either quite ignorant, know completely nothing about
flowers and/or tulips, or my mind has to be in a state in
which my understanding is restricted by my imagination so
that I can judge things without relating them to any concept
in particular. So precisely the state of mind which Kant calls
the free play.

This tulip example comes from (Bhme, 1995, p. 104)

22

Beauty as Experience
Besides the judgment of beauty Kant also treats the
judgment of the sublime in his Kritik der Urteilskraft. This
judgment can, in the same way as the judgment of beauty,
be either pure or fail to be pure according to the same
moments. In the treatment of the sublime Kant also gives
examples of architecture which can be experienced and
judged as being purely sublime; among others he talks
about the Pyramids of Egypt. This example is interesting
because here we can find an entrance for architecture in
Kants aesthetic theory because it is one of the only positive
examples Kant gives about architecture as an object of a
pure judgment of beauty.
What is interesting is that Kant here treats the Pyramid as
being judged according to a free judgment of the sublime.
Thus we can see this building, which is of course built with a
certain intrinsic concept in mind, namely a tomb for
Pharaoh x, apart from this concept. Of course it is relatively
easy to not see the concept the pyramid is taking to satisfy,
because its intrinsic concept, namely a tomb for Pharaoh x,
is not part of our present culture. This leads me to the
suggestion that Kant introduced the distinction between free
and dependent beauty and as relating to the judgment of
beauty (as Crawford supposes) and as relating to the object
of judgment. However it only relates to the object in the
23

Architecture and free beauty

sense that certain objects have a higher possibility of being
judged as free beauty because it is less likely that they
presuppose the concepts they are taken to satisfy. The first
example Kant gives of a free beauty in 16 could support
this reading:

Flowers are free beauties of nature. Hardly anyone but a

botanist knows the true nature of a flower, and even he,
while recognizing in the flower the reproductive organ of
the plant, pays no attention to this natural end when using
his taste to judge of its beauty (Kant, 2008, pp. 37, 16)
The flower, just like the Pyramid, is of course not completely
free from a concept it is taken to satisfy, Kant recognizes the
flower as having a concept of an end, namely its
reproductive organ, however, when judged of its pure
beauty we dont pay attention to this end, not even if this
end is part of our knowledge. Kant hereby makes perfectly
clear that the flower is in fact not free from a concept it is
taken to satisfy and thus the flower is not strictly speaking a
free beauty, however, the judgment is a free judgment. Still
with the sentence Flowers are free beauties Kant insists in
saying that the flower itself is a free beauty and not (only)
the judgment that can be made about it. There must be a
reason why he seems so strict. This is, I think, because it
24

Beauty as Experience
must be clear that the flower has many objective features,
like its shape and color, which can also give a pleasurable
feeling without an apparent relation to an end. It is
relatively easy to perceive the flower without thinking of its
direct purpose, while for another thing, for example a
hammer, it is quite difficult to see it without thinking of its
purpose. Still about both we could make a free judgment of
pure beauty; however, for the flower it is more likely that
this happens than it is for the hammer. Just like it is easier to
see the Pyramid as a free beauty, because its concept is
vague, than that it is to see a Kiosk as one, because its
concept is apparent. We could thus say that the Pyramid is
more a free beauty and the Kiosk is more a dependent
beauty, however, this way of using the predicates will
always stay a sliding scale, there is no strict boundary
between what is a free beauty and what is a dependent
beauty, its merely a heightening of the possibility of a
judgment of pure beauty to happen.

25

A new perspective

4 A new perspective
There are many other things in Kants writing that can be
questioned, disputed or specified, (among others the precise
functioning of the claim for universality) however, I have
only tried addressing the problems arising from the freedependent beauty distinction because in this way I could
introduce architecture inside Kants aesthetic theory.
However most of these disputes can, in my opinion, be
solved by acknowledging two major limitations of Kants
text.
The first intrinsic problem of Kants aesthetic theory is that it
is actually written as a theory of judgment and therefore it
doesnt directly deal with the actual experience of the
beautiful. Also this means that the entire text is shaped
according to a scheme Kant used elsewhere, namely the
one in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. The demarcation line
between when Kant is talking about the experience of
beauty as opposed to the judgment of beauty is not clear
and creates many interpretational problems. Secondly Kant
struggles with the legacy of his contemporaries, namely the
strict dichotomy of object and subject. Still Kants theory
stays a solid base to start from since he addresses and/or
deeps out almost anything one can say about the
experience and judgment of beauty.
26

Beauty as Experience
Gernt Bhme addresses both these problems of Kants

Kritik der Urteilskraft in his writing Kants Aesthetics: a New

Perspective (Bhme, 1995). According to Bhme, to fully
understand the meaning of the Kritik der Urteilskraft, one
has to read the entire book laterally because Kants most
significant observations are often hidden in his work and
are frequently found in examples, footnotes and excurses
(Bhme, 1995, pp. 101, 116). What you will find then is
not an aesthetic theory that is merely concerned with the
judgment of beauty but one that is in truth a highly

sensitive and sympathetic examination of the phenomenon

of beauty and of the experience of beauty (Bhme, 1995,
p. 116). However, the entire Kritik der Urteilskraft is not
written as such. In principle Kant wrote a theory on the
judgment of beauty and not on the experience of beauty.
This means that the entire text is shaped according to a
different scheme, namely one that contains an analysis of
the judgment x is beautiful. And therefore it does not
directly treat the experience of beauty.
Like said before, it is unclear what is actually meant when
saying x is beautiful. The word beauty is used with
different intensities, sometimes doing more justice to the
word, sometimes less. As Kant would say it, some
judgments of beauty are pure and some are not. Kant tries
27

A new perspective
to distinguish a pure judgment of beauty as opposed to one
that is not pure by stating what it is not. Namely; an object
is beautiful when it is the object of a necessary delight apart
from any interest, apart from a concept and apart from the
representation of an end. Additionally Bhme finds that
Kant asserts that beauty is not a predicate, but that we
speak about beauty as if it is a predicate. This form of
speech, x is beautiful suggests that the term beautiful is a
predicate

applied

to

x.

Kant

breaks

through

this

appearance by saying He will speak of the beautiful as if

beauty were a property of the object and the judgment

logical. However Kant does not give a decisive answer
about what beauty then is, he only states what it is not.
What does become clear in Kants writing is that the basis
for the judgment x is beautiful is to be found in the
judging subject, and not in x. It is a judgment on the stateof-mind of the subject in the face of the beautiful object, to
be more precise, a judgment concerning the harmonious
play of the faculties of imagination and understanding in
the

mutual

relation

with

the

powers

of

given

representation(Kant, 2000, pp. 9, 102). The true meaning

of x is beautiful would then have to be I feel myself
beautiful in the face of x (Bhme, 1995, p. 102). Kant
doesnt come to this strict analogy because it confronts him
28

Beauty as Experience
with the problem of a relation between subject and object.
Kant stays under the spell of his contemporaries and the
strict dichotomy of object and subject. Because of this he
cannot assign the basis of this relation in the object and
thus he has to seek it in the perceiving subject.
Bhme, however, suggest that beauty is to be found in an
in-between; a theory of beauty should be concerned with
the relation between human states and environmental
qualities (Bhme, 1993, p. 114). Because, as Bhme points
out, the judgment of beauty can only be made at all if x, the
beautiful object, is given. The perceiving subject and the
radiating object thus must have some sort of shared reality.
Also in Kants writing such inter-subjectivity can be found,
although he is never decisive. When Kant claims that the
judgment of beauty is apart from a concept (9) this also
means that the judgment x is beautiful does not refer to
what x precisely speaking is, but it does refer to the fact that
x is given at all.
Other examples of inter-subjectivity are to be found in
Kants use of free beauty and his use of the word
representation. Like explained before, in my interpretation,
free beauty can relate to both; the judgment of the subject

and the qualities of the object. The freeness of beauty

29

A new perspective
relates to both; having a free state-of-mind and dealing
with a beauty free of an imposed concept. Also Kants use
of the word representation has this ambiguous place in his
writing since it is precisely an in-between. In a judgment of
beauty one feels pleasure caused by the free play of the
mind reflecting on the representation of an object. When
we perceive and reflect upon an object we can never
perceive the actual entirety of the object, we always see a
representation of the object. For Kant this representation is
the word for an object at any stage in its determination by
the subject (Palmquist, 2010). Once it is determined we will
see the object as the thing we have determined it to be. But
before its determination it stands in-between the subject and
the object, it is neither in the object nor in the subject.

30

Beauty as Experience

5 Atmosphere
Because

Kant

is

never

unambiguous

about

the

intersubjective status of beauty I will continue with someone

who is, namely Gernot Bhme. In his writing Atmosphere as

the Fundamental Concept of a New Aesthetics (Bhme,

1993) he uses the existing peculiar intermediary status of
atmospheres as an in-between that could play a crucial role
in redefining a theory of beauty. This theory is thus
concerned with the relation between human states and
environmental qualities. It searches more in-depth to the
meaning of this and, this in-between, in order to find an
entity that could bridge the gap between the state-of-mind
of the perceiving subject and the environmental qualities in
which

the

subject

is

immerged.

This

in-between,

characterized by Bhme as atmosphere, suggests a quality

radiated by objects that tinctures the mood of the perceiving
subject. It must be clear that such an approach to an
aesthetic theory is much more serviceable to a possible
creator of beauty (an architect) because it connects the
qualities of the beautiful object to the feelings in the
perceiving subject caused by that object. In this sense it
adds to a theory on the judgment of beauty because its
focus shifts towards the understanding of the experience,
and the interconnection of subject and object, that comes
before the judgment.
31

Atmosphere
Bhme uses the word atmosphere as we use it in everyday
life; one speaks of the serene atmosphere of a spring

morning or the homely atmosphere of a garden (Bhme,

1993, p. 113). In this manner of speaking it is unclear
whether we should attribute atmosphere to the objects and
environments from which they proceed or to the subjects
who experience them. We both feel at home in the homely
garden and the garden itself is homely. The atmosphere of
the garden is precisely an in-between. On my feeling I can

feel in what kind of place I am (Bhme, 2014, pp. 27,28).

Of course not only the place you are in defines your stateof-mind, you always carry in yourself a certain mood. What
Bhme tries to make clear is that this mood you carry can
be influenced or strengthened by the atmosphere you find
yourself in. The atmosphere sets a kind of underlying tone
that tinctures all the others moods that arise in you. A
homely garden can help you feel at home, however, it is not
a guarantee; it is a heightening of a possibility. The homely
garden tries to lure you into a state of homeliness. When
we deal with an experience of beauty the presence of the
object and the receptivity of the subject merge and cointeract.
Because atmospheres belong neither to the object nor to the
subject it is difficult to define what they are. Bhme
32

Beauty as Experience
expresses this as follows: Atmospheres are neither

something objective, that is, qualities possessed by things,

and yet they are something thing-like, belonging to the
thing in that things articulate their presence through
qualities. Nor are atmospheres something subjective, for
example, determinations of a psychic state. And yet they
are subject-like, belong to subjects in that they are sensed in
bodily presence by human beings and this sensing is at the
same time a bodily state of being of subjects in
space(Bhme, 1993, p. 122). One of the keywords in
Bhmes explanation is presence; or more precisely the
simultaneous presence of body and thing; the co-presence
of the two (or multiple). Without the co-presence of the
perceiver and the perceived there would be no atmosphere.
Atmosphere is the shared reality of the co-presence of the
perceiver and the perceived. Atmosphere is the presence
radiated by objects and perceived by a subject present. This
sensing of presence happens before the object is
determinate. You perceive atmosphere before you perceive
objects. And in this sense atmosphere might precisely be
what Kant calls representation, namely; an object at any
stage in its determination by the subject.
The judgment which the perceiving subject makes about the
presence

of

an

object

cannot
33

communicate

the

Atmosphere
characteristics of the object, because they are not
determined yet, but instead that one responds to its
presence in a characteristic way. This characteristic
response, a feeling of pleasure caused by the free play of
the faculties of the mind and the presence of the object, is
called beauty. To say x is beautiful is to say; I find myself
in a characteristic state, with a corresponding feeling, in the
presence of x (Bhme, 1995, p. 105). The connection
between the subjects state-of-mind and the objects
characteristics is exemplified in atmosphere.
Additionally,

besides

its

intersubjective

character,

atmospheres are noteworthy because they always consist of

a multi-sensory perception. Atmosphere consists of the
perception, with all the senses available to you, of the
presence of all the things surrounding you. A cozy
atmosphere is in so far cozy in that vision, olfaction,
audition, tactility, thermoception, proprioception, and all
the other senses you want to distinguish harmonize into one
atmosphere of coziness. As the Finish architectural theorist

The judgment of
environmental character is a complex multisensory fusion of
countless factors which are immediately and synesthetically
Juhani

Pallasmaa

would

say:

grasped as an overall atmosphere (Pallasmaa, 2014). This

also means that the harmoniousness of an atmosphere can
34

Beauty as Experience
easily be disturbed if one of the sense perceptions is
unharmoniously triggered. If a room looks cozy, has a cozy
touch and smells cozy the harmony of the cozy atmosphere
can still easily be disturbed if there is heavy metal music
playing.
As Bhme notes there are an infinite number of
atmospheres, among others he names: serene, serious,
terrifying, oppressive, elevating, open, confining, joyful,
melancholic, majestic, frosty, cozy, festive (Bhme, 1993, p.
123; 2014, p. 29). This list seems endless and unclear
therefore Bhme proposes three groups of characteristics
which the different atmospheres could belong to. The first
group could be characterized as intimations of movement in
the confines or expanses of space. Atmospheres belonging
to this group are for example open, elevating and
oppressive. The second group is made up of synesthetic
properties. This group consists of atmospheres belonging to
more than one sensory field simultaneously, for instance
when we find ourselves in a chilly atmosphere this might be
because of the low temperature and/or the cold blue color.
Atmospheres belonging to this group are for example chilly,
sharp and warm. The third group consists of atmospheres
described by their social characteristics. These are the most
culturally specific atmospheres, belonging to this group are
35

Atmosphere
for example serious and cozy but also holy and powerful
(Bhme, 2014).
This introduction and grouping of different atmospheres,
and thus different ways a co-presence can manifest itself,
adds a whole lot to the discussion on aesthetics. However,
this new approach to aesthetics is not specifically dealing
with the experience of beauty but also with the experience
of joyfulness or the experience of melancholy. All these
different atmospheres create a distinct feeling in the
perceiving subject. So, what is the place of beauty between
all these atmospheres? Bhme suggests that beauty is (just)
one of many atmospheres when saying: Classical

aesthetics dealt practically only with three of four

atmospheres, for example, the beautiful (and) the sublime
(Bhme, 1993, p. 122). It seems like Bhme suggests that
you can find yourself in a beautiful atmosphere in the same
way as you might find yourself in a melancholic
atmosphere.
I dont agree with this. Since beauty can be found in so
many different occasions, not all of them feel the same in
the way one melancholic atmosphere feels the same as the
other. What I propose is that beauty is indeed an
intersubjective entity but that it is not a specific type of
36

Beauty as Experience
atmosphere. If you find yourself at the beach during sunset
with your beloved one the co-presence of you, your love,
the setting sun, the water, the beach, the temperature, the
wind and everything else together could form a romantic
atmosphere. You both feel romantic and the setting is
romantic. However, besides the romantic-ness of this
atmosphere, the whole atmosphere can at a certain moment
create a more intense feeling inside you; a feeling of
beauty. This feeling can either feel to be caused by the
romantic-ness of the atmosphere itself, a beautiful romantic
atmosphere, or by a separate object within this atmosphere,
for example the sun. Atmosphere is always produced by all
the objects present in your field of perception in interaction
with your state-of-mind. Beauty is found either in the totality
of all these objects, so in the atmosphere (a beautiful
melancholic atmosphere), or in one separate object part of
this atmosphere (beauty).
So firstly beauty can be the feeling of pleasure caused by
the harmonious play of the faculties of imagination and
understanding in the mutual relation with the co-presence of
the entire environment which is radiating a unique
atmosphere. For this all the objects present are judged as
being a whole and possess a certain harmony in that they
radiate a same sort of atmosphere. Beauty is found in the
37

Atmosphere
harmonious wholeness of the atmosphere. An example of
this could be the experience one has in a Gothic church
during the holy mass in which the forms of the architecture,
their old stones, the sound of the liturgy songs, their echoes,
the smell of incense, the light falling through their smoke,
the courteous faithful all work to create a same sort of
sacred atmosphere. The wholeness found in this atmosphere
can be experienced as beautiful.
Secondly beauty can be found in a separate object within
an atmosphere. This beauty shows its presence in the same
way as atmospheres, as a co-presence, but without
precisely

being

an

atmosphere.

In

this

occurrence

atmosphere is the co-presence of the entire environment, all

objects co-present, while the beautiful is found in one of the
objects present. This beauty is part of the atmosphere with
which it harmonizes but at the mean time it stands out from
this atmosphere and becomes a separate entity within the
atmosphere it belongs to. An example of this could be the
experience one has while strolling through an old Dutch city
in which the bricks of the buildings, their detailed window
frames, the bricks of the pavement, the tree lined canals, the
bridges over them and the murmuring of the citizens
harmonize to create an unique atmosphere. Strolling
through this atmosphere and going around another corner
38

Beauty as Experience
you will find the market square opening up towards you
with on the other side of it the soaring church tower,
standing high above the rest of the city. The sudden
presence of this separate object, that is simultaneously part
and not part of the surrounding atmosphere, might trigger
inside you a feeling of beauty. The materiality and position
of the church tower makes it harmonious with the rest of the
cities atmosphere, while in the meantime its bigness makes
it stand out of it.
In both cases atmosphere plays a major role in the
facilitation of beauty; however, since beauty is not precisely
a defined atmosphere in itself, we should ask ourselves
what kinds of atmospheres do facilitate an experience of
beauty? As we found in Chapter 2 the faculty of
imagination harmonizes with the faculty of understanding in
environments in which one can perceive whatever might be
without any commitment to what that might be, while, at the
same time one is in an environment in which one is
unknown. So, on the one hand the perceiver must feel safe
enough in its encompassing atmosphere to look at the world
without relating it to particular concepts, while, at the mean
time the perceiver senses that there is something unknown to
be found in this same atmosphere. An atmosphere that
complements the experience of beauty, in the way that it
39

Atmosphere
contributes to providing the perceiving subject with a free
state-of-mind, is preferably one in which the perceiver feels
safe while at the mean time it holds surprises.

40

Beauty as Experience

6 An experience of beauty
What we found in the previous two examples is that beauty
is not a singular experience in time and space; it is instead
4
an experience that enfolds in time and through movement .

There is a sequence of events before the actual feeling of

beauty is evoked and the corresponding judgment is made.
The way beauty is experienced, with all its various parts
and elements, is the pre-eminent thing that binds various
experiences of beauty together. Some of the elements of
which the experience of beauty is comprised have already
come past; for example the importance of the state-of-mind
when perceiving beauty and the importance of atmosphere
when perceiving beauty are both part of this experience.
First you have to be in a certain state-of-mind, then you
perceive a presence, this emits a certain feeling in yourself,
and only after that you judge an object or atmosphere as
beautiful. Kant has in his writing mostly kept his focus on
the functioning of the final judgment and thus keeping his
focus mostly on the theory of art-critique side. The
succession of possible events is, however, more interesting
for anyone who wishes to create something that has the
capacity to be found beautiful, for example an architect.

Movement of yourself or the things around you, may they be

visual, olfactive, auditive, etc.

41

An experience of beauty
Because when an architect understands the elements of
which an experience of beauty is comprised, s/he can
design his buildings in such a way that this experience is
facilitated.
To dig further into the elements of which an experience of
beauty is comprised we turn to John Dewey, he takes this
succession of events, the experience, as a starting point of
his aesthetic theory in his book Art as Experience (Dewey,
1994). He sees the final judgment of beauty merely as an
intellectualization of the actual experience of beauty. For

Dewey, judgment is an act of intelligence performed on

perception for the purpose of more adequate
perception(Ledey, 2013, p. 22). Furthermore he describes
the experience of beauty as an experience that is a
defined whole separate from experience in general. An
experience has a beginning and a clear end that are
separate from the general flow of experience: () we

have an experience when the material experienced runs its

course to fulfillment(Dewey, 1994, p. 36). This experience
is clearly marked by the consummation in the feeling of
beauty, or, in other words; the experience runs its course to
fulfillment in the feeling of beauty. The experience of beauty
ends at the moment this feeling is intellectualized by
judgment, when judgment is made the perceiving subject
42

Beauty as Experience
snaps out of its state-of-mind that is in free play. The faculty
of understanding starts to constrain the faculty of
imagination, we will try to find logical argumentations for
our judgment of beauty and we start to feel desire and
importance in defending this judgment; we lose our
disinterested look on the object and the experience is
terminated.
What I find interesting about Deweys approach is that the
experience of beauty encapsulates more than only the
perception and/or judgment; it takes into account all the
things that happen before the perception and judgment. In
that sense it also takes into account how the free play of
mind is formed and/or sustained by the experience itself,
before this state-of-mind is confronted with the presence of
an object of beauty. This is extremely useful information for
a creator of potential beauty since the feeling and the
following judgment of beauty are never possible without the
perceiving subject having the correct state-of-mind. In the
course of an experience the state-of-mind of the perceiving
subject is constantly influenced by environmental qualities
present in other objects presented to the perceiving subject
as atmospheres. The state-of-mind can be influenced,
strengthened or weakened, by the atmosphere that is
radiated by the environment. Dewey stipulates that an
43

An experience of beauty
experience stands out because it is marked out from what
went before and what came after. It is the experience from
going through the gates of the city until reaching its
crescendo on the church square. An experience has an
unity established by a single quality that pervades the entire
experience (Dewey, 1994, p. 38). I would like to
characterize this single prevailing quality as the atmosphere
of the experience (which we dealt with in the previous
5

chapter) .
Dewey identifies that an experience consists of successive
parts, it flows freely without sacrifice of the self-identity of
the parts; the parts continuously merge so that there are no
holes or dead centers in it. This merging happens because
of the harmonious wholeness of the encompassing
atmosphere. What is most insightful about this stance is that

an experience, which is distinct because it is separate from

the general flow of experience because it has a clearly
defined beginning and end characterized by one prevailing
atmosphere, still has separate parts in it. There are parts but
these parts merge into a whole, brought together by the
5

Dewey is not familiar with the concept of atmosphere, he,

however, tries to grant this same inter-subjective characteristic to
emotion. Emotion is the moving and cementing force (that)

provides unity in and through the varied parts of an experience

(Dewey, 1994, p. 44)

44

Beauty as Experience
prevailing atmosphere. These parts in it are distinct, not
because they have a distinct color of atmosphere, but
because they have a distinct shade of atmosphere.
It must be said that every step in this sequence of
experience doesnt necessarily lead to the following step
and that this experience will thus indeed consummate in the
feeling

of

beauty.

The

experience

can

be

ended

prematurely when there is a break in the continuous

experience. This break is likely to occur when the
harmoniousness of the atmosphere in which the perceiver is
emerged is disturbed, either through an unharmonious
object or movement in the environment or by the slipping of
the state-of-mind of the perceiving subject towards a stateof-mind which is governed by understanding.
With help of the previous enquiry in the experience of
beauty we can now start making a sequence of some of the
elements of which this experience is composed:

1. Subject is present and carries with

him/her a certain state-of-mind and a
specific nimbleness

45

An experience of beauty

2. The perceiving subject and the

presence of its environment have a
shared
reality
exemplified
by
atmosphere. This atmosphere is
breathe-in by all the senses of the
perceiving subject. This is where the
experience of beauty can possibly
start.

3. The atmosphere has the ability to

alter, sustain, strengthen or weaken the
existing state-of-mind of the perceiving
subject that is submerged in it. In an
experience of beauty the atmosphere
can help to change or sustain the stateof-mind of a subject into free play. The
faculty of imagination becomes free
from guidance by the faculty of
understanding; we reflect upon what is
given without pinning things down.

4. The subject perceives the presence

of a thing. This presence can either be
of the harmonious totality of all the
objects part of the atmosphere or in a
separate object that is simultaneously
46

Beauty as Experience
harmonious and contrasting with this
atmosphere.

5. The subject reflects upon this

presence with a free play of mind and
this causes in him/her a feeling of
beauty.

6. Based on this feeling the subject

makes the judgment that s/he
experienced beauty.
This act of
intelligence is made through utilizing
the faculty of understanding, thus the
perceiver snaps out of the free play of
mind and the experience of beauty is
terminated.

7. Beauty is assigned as a predicate to

the object or environment that was
present while intellectualizing the
experience of beauty in: x is
beautiful.

47

An experience of beauty
A possible sequence of an experience of beauty in an
environment could go as follows: Firstly the perceiving
subject already has a certain state-of-mind before entering
into an experience. This state-of-mind can be strengthened
or altered towards a state-of-mind in which the faculties of
imagination and understanding are in free play by the
environmental

qualities

radiated

through

certain

atmosphere. This is supposedly an atmosphere that feels

new (in that it is unknown) and hides secret but in which
one still feels safe and without need to pay strict focused
attention to anything in particular. It takes time, movement
and a wide, broad, open perception to fully let the
atmosphere

affect

your

state-of-mind.

This

requires

something from the perceiving subject, namely the free play

of mind and a free way of perceiving, and something from
the environment, namely a space in which the subject can
spend time moving around while not having the necessity to
focus their attention to presences that indicate something
defined (traffic lights, tour guides pointing at stuff,
nameplates, explanations, directions, a wild lion). Once in
the correct state-of-mind one has the potential to feel beauty
when perceiving the presence of atmosphere or the
presence of something in this atmosphere. The experience
will be consummated in the feeling of beauty. This feeling
mostly means that the experience is brought to an end
because this feeling gives you interest in the presence that
48

Beauty as Experience
caused it, you will try to define the presence as an object
and you will try to define the feeling you just had. Your
feeling goes into judgment and judgment to understanding
and the loss of the feeling of beauty.
A great example of an experience that consummates itself
in beauty is the entrance towards the ancient Roman city of
Petra in contemporary Jordan. The visitor to this city first
walks through a kilometers long, very high and quite
narrow gorge. This gorge radiates an atmosphere that has
the ability to change the state-of-mind of a subject that finds
her/himself into it. There is hardly anything that requires
strict focused attention and the direction of movement is
clear. Still in the movement through the gorge there is an
anticipation of new things to happen. You move around a
corner, the gorge widens or narrows, it becomes higher or
lower, there is more light or more shadow, the color of the
stone slightly changes. The time that is forcefully spent in the
gorge, because of its length, gives the subject time to fully
absorb the atmosphere of the place. The gorge ends facing
the temple El Kazneh. This temple is carved out of the same
rocks, illuminated by the sun (which is lacking in most of the
gorge), clearly man made but still very much part of the
same atmosphere. It is easy to find this temple beautiful. The
entire gorge prepared your mind to be in the correct state
49

An experience of beauty
of perceiving the El Kazneh as beautiful. Without this
preparation the beauty of the El Kazneh would be less
intense, or at least more mediocre. Further into Petra there
are more similar temples as the El Kaznheh, some larger
and more meticulously crafted (so formally speaking maybe
more beautiful), however they do not get the same universal
appreciation in terms of beauty as the El Kazneh has.

50

Beauty as Experience

7 Promise of more
But why does the El Kazneh trigger the feeling of beauty?
And not some other object? Why should that stone on the
ground not trigger your feelings, you are in the correct
state-of-mind right? I think it is quite right to say that, when
you are in the correct state-of-mind, anything can be
perceived as beautiful (light falling on a grain of sand, or a
suddenly found flower). However there is a much higher
change that you perceive the El Kazneh at the end of the
gorge as beautiful. There are a few simple reasons for this;
firstly the El Kazneh is framed in such a way that the eye is
immediately pulled in its direction, it does this without
disturbing the atmosphere in which the perceiver is
immerged. The El Kazneh is directly framed by the end of
the gorge itself; it is clearly marked as the end or
consummation of the entire experience. Adding to this is
that there is a contrast between the dark gorge and the light
shining on the El Kazneh, pulling the eye towards the light.
Thirdly the forms of the El Kazneh are in contrast to the
natural forms of the gorge and its surrounding. Still El
Kazneh is very much part of the whole atmosphere of the
environment because it is cut out of the same rocks.
Additionally the El Kazneh is put on a small pedestal to
make it seem more important. The combination of these
features, being in contrast but still very much part of the
51

Promise of more

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.1 The sequence towards the El Kazneh

52

Beauty as Experience

7.2 The El Kazneh is framed by the gorge

53

Promise of more
encompassing atmosphere while at the mean time being
framed, heightens the change that a subject in the correct
state-of-mind is unconsciously pulled towards the presence
of the object. This doesnt necessarily mean that the subject
will indeed experience the object as beautiful; much is
dependent on personal taste and previous experience (if
you have claustrophobia you might hate the gorge, if you
despise or love roman architecture your experience might
become polluted, etc.), still the frame and the contrast
heightens the chance of beauty to happen.
6

This frame and contrast pulls our eye towards something, it

puts emphasize on the object but it doesnt tell us anything
about the object itself. This is also apparent in the fact that
the presence of the object is judged of beauty and not the
objective object itself. This leads to the question if there are
any properties of the object that can heighten the chance of
an experience of beauty to be consummated in the presence
of that object? To find a direction in answering this we turn
to Alexander Nehamas who in his book Only a Promise of

Happiness characterizes beauty as an invitation to further

6

Beauty in atmosphere is found through a multi-sensory

experience which is harmonious. Beauty found in an object within
an atmosphere (like El Kazneh or beauty found in a musical piece
(not in the complete atmosphere of music) is triggered by the
pulling towards of one of the senses

54

Beauty as Experience
experiences (Nehamas, 2001; Sartwell, 2012, p. 7). The
beautiful object promises us more; it evokes longing. The
presence of the object can give hints towards this more.
I found, through analyzing various events of beauty that
these hints either seduce you to a continuing of the
experience of beauty, they promise you a prolonging of the
experience you have now, or they promise you that you
might find other (agreeable) beauty in it. In the El Kazneh
the hints towards a continuing of the experience could be
the pedestal and the entrance; we can continue our
experience up and inside the building. The hints towards
finding other beauty are mostly in the fact that it is
immediately clear, while only perceiving the presence of the
El Kazneh, that it is a job well done. Because of its
precise detailing in sculpture, columns and framing; it is
worthy of admiration and thus of our agreeable beauty.
Besides this it is also of importance that the El Kazneh forms
a clear separate and defined unity, it is immediately
apparent which elements are part of it and which are not.
This is on the one hand achieved through the contrast in
form with the environment, the carved rocks in contrast to
the raw rocks. On the other hand the carved rocks form a
unity

in

materialization

and

55

style

that

produce

Promise of more
harmonious whole in itself, which is simultaneously in
harmony with the encompassing atmosphere.

56

Beauty as Experience

8 Elements
We can now name several elements that are always or
frequently

part of an experience of beauty.

Most

importantly it is essential that the perceiving subject has a

state-of-mind that is open to perceiving beauty, this state-ofmind is called the free-play and is a state in which
imagination

harmonizes

with

understanding.

The

atmosphere in which the perceiver is immerged can

facilitate the formation of this specific state-of-mind. This
atmosphere is preferably safe, in that there are no things
that require immediate focused attention, and harmonious,
in that most of the various objects that make up the
atmosphere radiate a similar atmosphere, yet at the same
time the atmosphere should present or promise something
unknown, and thus potentially unsafe and unharmonious.
When in the just state-of-mind anything can be perceived
as beauty, either atmospheres or objects, however, some
things can help you see the beautiful more easily; they lure
the perceivers senses towards their presence. Through the
example of Petra we have found several of these elements.
Firstly the frame. When the co-presences of which the
atmosphere is composed emphasize the presence of the
beautiful. This can either be a spatial frame, composed by
the presence other than the perceivers, or a mental frame,
57

Elements
shaped by the specific interest of the perceiver. The spatial
frame can, naturally, take very different forms and
intensities. It can be very clear, like the gorge of Petra, the
picture frame around a painting or the pedestal of a statue,
or very subtle, like a ray of light illuminating a faade or
two earrings emphasizing the face of a girl. We wont dive
into the mental frame any further, since, to be put to use by
a designer, it requires a categorization of people into
groups; something that would never do justice to the
7
individuality of any person .

Secondly, occasionally intertwined or connected to the

frame, is the border condition, either experienced in
atmosphere or in the beautiful. These borders are mostly
presented to us in contrasts, may it be in shape, size, color
or style. Borders in atmosphere are a transition towards a
different shade of atmosphere and make you conscious of a
next part in the experience. For example when moving
through a city we see different elements of it, each defined
by their own specific shade of atmosphere, from boulevard,
over town cannels, in streets, through alleyways and onto

As Deleuze and Guattari remarked on their co-writing of the

book Anti-Oedipus: Since each of us was several, there was
already quite a crowd(Ballantyne, 2007, p. 1). Referring to the
multi-layers of which self-identity is composed.

58

Beauty as Experience
the market square. All these shades are brought together
under the overall atmosphere of the city. However, precisely
in their transition, the border between one and the other
shade, we are pulled towards the next. This border can be
unlocalized in atmosphere or localized in one specific
presence. This presence, the beautiful, stands out of the
shade of atmosphere it is immerged in, it is in contrast,
while simultaneously being part of it, it is in harmony.
Thirdly the Promise of More. The presence of the beautiful
does a promise to the perceiver by giving subtle hints
towards a more. These hints can either seduce you to a
continuing of the experience of beauty, they promise you a
prolonging of the experience you have now, or they
promise you that you might discover more layers than are
apparent in immediate presence. Since beauty is found in a
presence, the representation of an object, the object is not
yet determined by the perceiver, it hides secrets. In
architecture the promises towards a continuing of the
experience can be quite direct; the ascending of stairs, the
opening of an entrance, a window with a view or a peek
towards the next space. However, these architectural
elements should be designed with great care (not
necessarily meaning with great detail); a normal door is not
a promise. A normal door excludes the unfamiliar perceiver
59

Elements
from entering, while a promising entrance should invite the
unfamiliar perceiver in, without becoming itself the object of
8

beauty .
The promise of layers hints towards a more to discover than
is apparent in immediate presence. The presence of the
beautiful gives clues to its multi-layeredness. Additional
meaning is given to the beautiful object through its layers
but their exact meaning is not yet grasped in the presence
of the object, they are only hints and they require further
discovery. While finding beauty in the presence of an
object, this object invites you to further explore its hints and
unravel its layers. The hints towards multi-layerdness form
the first step in a narrative that enhances the meaning of
the, now judged as beautiful, object. Although the layers
can be multiple and of a very diverse kind, may they be
referential,

theoretical,

political,

historical,

cultural,

environmental, local or something else, they all enhance the

overall narrative structure of the object itself. In the
discovery of the narrative one immerges into a new
experience which can again lead to beauty or one may find
8

In this door example I mean to explain the promise of

continuing and not the promise of layers. Of course a door or
entrance can be beautiful in itself, however, the perceivers
interest would then be terminated in the door itself and not in the
continuing of the experience (and in what lays beyond).

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Beauty as Experience
the reasons for the previously found beauty. And we will
find, as we all know, that these reasons can never suffice in
explaining the beautiful.
In the preceding chapter I have put together some of the
elements of which an experience of beauty is composed.
Often these elements, as Dewey notes, overlap and merge
in

experience;

therefore

they

might

become

less

recognizable. Still, I think, the awareness of the existence of

these elements could form essential knowledge for every
designer because decisions about beauty are never
something a designer can bypass. Before clarifying some of
my statements in examples I will conclude this section by
bringing the elements of which an experience of beauty is
composed under keywords:
1. Atmosphere
a. Safe
b. Unknown
c. Harmonious
2. Frame
a. Mental frame
b. Spatial frame
3. Border Condition
a. Contrast in atmosphere
b. Contrast in presence
61

Elements
4. Promise of more
a. Promise of continuing
b. Promise of layers

62

Beauty as Experience

9 Examples
The Parthenon in Athens has generally been regarded as
one of the most beautiful examples of classical architecture;
mostly motives are given such as its great historical value
and adherence to the rules of the golden section and
perspective. I will argue that the beauty found in the
Parthenon is mostly caused by the way how the movement
in and towards the Acropolis is able to facilitate the several
elements of the experience of beauty. The given motivations,
such as historical value and proportions, are merely the
translation and intellectualization of the hints the Parthenon
is giving in this experience.
From afar the hill of the Acropolis dominates the views over
Athens and on it the Parthenons presence already stands
out. From any point in the city the Acropolis lures your eyes
towards it; it already has most of the ingredients of an
experience of beauty; it forms a border condition with the
rest of the city below, it is framed by its pedestal and
promises us more by the mythical ruins on top of it.
However the real experience starts when approaching the
Acropolis and the Parthenon slowly disappears from your
field of vision. While approaching the Acropolis you start
becoming more and more immerged in remnants from
ancient Greek times; walking over the old stones of the
63

Examples

1.

2.

4.

3.

5.
9.1 The sequence towards the Parthenon

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Beauty as Experience

9.2 The Parthenon is framed by the Propylaea

65

Examples
Panathenaic way and passing the ruins of the Theatre of
Herodes Atticus you start seeing glimpses of the ancient,
and only, entrance towards the Acropolis; the Propylaea. At
the brink of ascending the stairs you feel already completely
immerged in the atmosphere of these ancient ruins; an
atmosphere that is safe and harmonious, yet unknown.
While breathing in this atmosphere your state-of-mind
becomes in harmony with the atmosphere; the free play of
mind is formed.
While ascending the stairs you are on the one hand invited
onto the Acropolis by the Propylaea through a carefully
choreographed entrance, while on the other hand it blocks,
but latter reveals, the Acropolis. First the two wings of the
Propylaea embrace your coming in; you are now
surrounded by the colonnades without being under them.
Moving

up

further

you

find

yourself

between

the

Propylaeas columns; there is only a glimpse of the

Acropolis from here because the colonnade towards the
Acropolis is divided by a wall, with a gate, in the middle
blocking the views. Going through the gate of the
Propylaea you are suddenly confronted with the threequarter perspective view of the Parthenon, framed through
the last colonnade of the Propylaea.

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Beauty as Experience
The structure of the Parthenon creates a border condition
because of its contrast in size accentuated by its highest
point placing and pedestal. Furthermore it promises you
more than is apparent in its first appearance. Its ruins
promise you a rich historical layering and other narrative
structures to be discovered. While its heavy roof and
pedestal frame its dark and promising interior; giving a
promise of a continuation of the experience ascending its
pedestal and discovering what is beyond the columns.
Precisely because of the three-quarter perspective view you
are having from the Propylaea the interior of the Parthenon
9

is not revealed .
Now for an example closer to home, my home town, the
medieval Dutch city of Delft. What I see happening here
everyday is that tourists (beauty seekers) are dropped out
of their busses halfway into the city, right besides one of its
main monuments; the New Church. By this way of acces
they are placed halfway into the experience and they are
denied the involvment in the full experience of beauty from
beginning till consummation. They can only halfheartedly

In ancient times the experience was continued when moving

closer to the Parthenon. It was forbidden to enter the rooms inside
the Parthenon, but from some points glimpses of the interior and
the majestic statue of Athena were revealed.

67

Examples
experience the play of atmosphere and the revealing and
vanishing of Delfts main beauties.
This experience can most completely be described when we
take Delfts old situation in mind, in which Delfts defense
walls were still intact and the city stood solitarily into the flat
agricultural landscape. When approaching the city of Delft
from the countryside we already see some of the
churchtowers spiralling above the city. Like in the Acropolis,
Delfts presence already stands out. From any point in the
landscape it lures your eyes towards it; it already has most
of the ingredients of an experience of beauty; it forms a
border condition with the surrounding landscape, it is
framed by the city wall, which acts as a pedestal for the
church towers, and these church towers promises us more
through their sheer contrasting size. Again, the real
experience starts when approaching the city; when the
church towers slowly start to disappear because of the
rising city walls. At this moment the city gate becomes in
sight, while moving towards and through the gate it forms a
transition from the open and unprotected atmosphere of the
landscape towards the enclosed and protected atmosphere
of the city. The harmonious atmosphere of Delft, defined by
the tree lined canals and the encompassing brick
materialization, is both safe and unknown. Strolling through
Delft we see different elements of it, each defined by their
68

Beauty as Experience
own specific shade of atmosphere, from streets, over town
cannels

and

through

alleyways.

Each

transition

in

atmosphere lures us towards the next. This play of

transitions reaches its crescendo when entering the market
square. There, framed by the sides of the Town hall and the
town houses, the New Church is revealed to us. The open
market square displays a new shade of atmosphere that at
the mean time opens up views towards the church. The New
Church forms a border condition with the rest of the city,
because of its contrast in materialization, style and size, still
it is very much part of it because of its exact placement in
the urban fabric. Furthermore the opened and deep seated
entrance promises us a continuation into the church and up
the church tower, promising again extraordinary views.
While we only perceive the presence of the church in the
perception of beauty it is still immediately clear that this
church carries an additional narrative, hints towards this
10
are the multi-colored construction of the church .

10

The multi-colored construction of the New Church makes some

people dislike this church, I suggest the reasons behind this is that
it breaks too extensively with the surrounding, all brick,
atmosphere.

69

Examples

1.

3.

2.

4.
5.
9.3 The sequence towards the New Church

70

Beauty as Experience

9.4 The New Church is framed by the Town hall

and the market square housing

71

Bibliography

Bibliography
August, K. (2013). Building Beauty: Kantian aesthetics in a
time of dark ecology. (PhD), TU Delft, Delft.
Ballantyne, A. (2007). Deleuze & Guattari for Architects.
London and New York: Routledge.
Bhme, G. (1993). Atmosphere as the fundamental concept
of a new aesthetics. Thesis Eleven, 36(113).
Bhme, G. (1995). Kant's Aesthetics: A New Perspective.
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Bhme, G. (2014). Atmosphere as Mindful Physical
OASE,
Building
Presence
in
Space.
Atmosphere(#91).
Crawford, D. W. (1974). Kant's Aesthetic Theory. Madison:
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Dewey, J. (1994). Art as Experience. New York: Perigee
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Holland, L. (2013). Architecture and the Kantian Sublime.
Kant, I. (2000). Critique of the Power of Judgment.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Beauty as Experience
Kant, I. (2008). The critique of judgement (J. C. Meredith,
Trans.): Adelaide.
Ledey, T. (2013). Dewey's Aesthetics. The Stanford
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McGilchrist, I. (2009). The master and his emissary; The
divided brain and the making of the Western world.
London: Yale University Press.
Nehamas, A. (2001). A Promise of Happiness: The Place of
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Human Values. Yale University.
Pallasmaa, J. (2014). Atmosphere, Compassion and
OASE,
Building
Embodied
Experience.
Atmosphere(#91).
Palmquist, S. (2010). Glossary of Kant's Technical Terms. In
http://staffweb.hkbu.edu.hk/ppp/ksp1/KSPglos.ht
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Picture credits
Cover picture, 7.2 Tore Kjeilen
9.2 Elli Sougioultzoglou
9.4 Auteur unknown retrieved from http://www.wikidelft.nl
All other images and drawings are the auteurs own work.

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Beauty as Experience

Beauty as Experience
Author: Anton Zoetmulder
Student number: 1353640
Tutor: Stefan Kller
Course: Thesis Project Explore Lab
Course code: AR3EX301
Written for the graduation lab of Explore Lab on the faculty
of Architecture, Urbanism & Building Sciences on the TU
Delft

75